Stump Lane

[Image via: legalizecrime]

FRIENDS, YOUR MONTAG WOULD MAKE A SHITTY ANARCHIST. I lack virtue. Without virtue, anarchists are nothing but governors, warlords, and cops.

[I wanted to respond to an ages old comment from Justin, before the real world intervened. (His comment came in right around the time I lost my job.) I also meant to respond to Abonilox’s not-so-recent-recent-now post, and by way of chiming in on these, hoped to kind of save face with my friend Frederick on my anarchist leanings. Anarchism as “grid not goal.” This will take three or four posts to lay out and then, aside from possibly tuning-up a couple of old posts, we’ll see about winding The Stump down, and moving on to something new.]

What is virtue? I asked Justin a while back, in a pretty off-handed way, if being principled was a virtue, and he responded:

[Emphasis added.] I don’t think there is such a thing as being principled as a binary virtue. We all draw boundaries around what people should be treated with some list of rights, and what people can be disposed of in any way.

…[snip]…

Like right now, you think you are principled because you have a problem with Bin Laden being summarily executed. Those who don’t have a problem with that scenario presumably do have the same problems you have in others. The problems boil down to, it was morally wrong to do that to him (because that could one day be me.) For most people, being Osama Bin Laden, arch terrorist, master mind of 9/11, is so unthinkable, so alien, that he exists in a category of unPeople, that are not afforded consideration for what principles apply to the real people. [Justin

Have to admit I was rankled at that highlighted bit when I read it, and in a way still am. Though I am coming to terms with it here as I compose a post confessing my lack of virtue.

Well, following Badiou, who says ethical truths must be universal, and if I read him correctly, would characterize virtue as taking part in a truth-process, through militant fidelity to a universal principle. To be principled is virtue.

Take this notion of radical egalitarianism, which I daresay is a universal truth worth pledging fidelity to, (whatever that means living in the system that we do.) “No matter how powerful — regardless, even, of an individual’s utility to society — every person’s time is of equal value.”

The Abonilox asks, living in the system that we do:

…does it follow that we are obliged to remedy this inequality? That is, if you happen to have been rewarded (under this system) for the accident of being born a white male in the west, is there a moral obligation to diminish yourself in some way? [Abonilox]

To the first question, Badiou says “Yes!” As to the second, I’m guessing as a white male in the West, that the answer is “Probably.” Which is the curse of human consciousness! “Hey, I dreamed up a radical new paradigm for all human interaction. Are we now obligated to live by it?”

“Is it true?”

“I think it might be.”

“Then yes we are, goddamnit, if we are to call ourselves ethical beings.”

But here’s the problem: I bred. Ms. Montag and I have offspring to consider, and they are extremely compelling little fuckers when it comes to drawing Justin’s boundaries. Not that I would deny the people outside of this set {Montag's Loved Ones} consideration in my model based of radical egalitarianism, but despite that consideration, my closest peeps trump all. Blood is thicker that water, or whathaveyou. So, here we part ways with principled anarchist thought.

From Peter Marshall’s introduction to The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, a passage on Godwin’s early strict utilitarianism:

…the principle of impartiality, which arises from the fundamental equality of human beings and is the regulator of virtue, Godwin’s view of utility led him to some novel conclusions. While all human beings are entitled to equal consideration, it does not follow that they should be treated the same. When it comes to distributing justice I should put myself in the place of an impartial spectator and discriminate in favor of the most worthy, that is, those who have the greatest capacity to contribute to the general good. Thus in a fire, if I am faced with the inescapable choice of saving either a philosopher or a servant, I should choose the philosopher — even if I were the servant. If the servant had been my brother, my father, my sister, my mother or my benefactor, the case would be the same. ‘What magic’, Godwin asks, ‘is there in the pronoun ‘my’ that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth?’

…sentiments like gratitude, friendship, domestic and private affections which might interfere with our duty as impartial spectators have no place in justice. It might be more practical for me to prefer my friends and relatives, but it does not make them more worthy of my attention. [Marshall, p.30]

And, where it’s my offspring in particular who compel this thoughtcrime, this break with virtue, we should note the parting of ways with the idea that all power structures should be challenged, as it relates to another fairly common Anarchist notion, expressed by Hakim Bey when he calls “the Family, those ‘misers of love’ who hold hostages for a banal future[.]” To hold true to Anarchist ideals, to refuse to exercise power over, to allow the full freedom the human spirit craves, to let young people run wild to be raised by their own unmitigated experience of the world and its inhabitants, sounds beautiful and poetic. But it simply does not coincide with my experience of parenthood, which has been one of an unconditional love I never knew was inside me to give, and feeling a calling to the project of child rearing.

Whatever extent these feelings are owed to my being a white male product of the West in the society that elevated the nuclear family to a fetish, there is something genuine there, beyond mere cultural indoctrination. There is magic in the pronoun “my,” when it comes to my progeny. (Let’s forget the implications of using the possessive form here. I don’t mean to say, “Here are my young people, they have to do whatever I tell them.” But rather, “Here are my relations, their wellbeing is of the utmost importance to me.”)

It is in the interest of keeping a roof over their head and their sense of security intact that I don’t strategically default on the mortgage, or evade taxes to protest the war machine, or start a grow operation in the basement, or don a ski mask and throw Molotov cocktails at the Bank of America, or whatever it is Jack Crow would like to see happening next. ;-) In short, despite my freed mind, they do the job the nuclear fetish is intended to do, they keep me occupied and docile in a way that doesn’t allow me to act on anarchist principle. The experience of fatherhood has rendered me fundamentally incapable of virtue.

[Unstructured notes and thoughts that didn’t make it into the post if you continue after this point.]
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